A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and former editor at the Village Voice, Teresa Carpenter is also a lifelong diary enthusiast. Perhaps it was kismet, then, that she should dream up this stunning 400-year portrait of New York City through the private voices of its inhabitants. "Today I arrived by train in New York City, which I'd never seen before," wrote journalist Edward Robb Ellis in 1947. "Silently, inside myself, I yelled: I should have been born here!" Here are whimsical, sobering, and indelible reflections; historical moments like George Washington's first State of the Union address, the death of Abraham Lincoln, and the sinking of the Titanic; and contributions from Henry Hudson and Keith Haring, Gertrude Vanderbilt and Eugene O'Neill.

"I think the most fun way to read New York Diaries would be to keep it by your bedside.... The effect, oftentimes, is of a chorus of voices, separated by decades, even centuries, unconsciously echoing the same sentiments and complaints."—NPR.org